Every week in my childhood church I was thankful when Old Prayer finally ended. Our little white-siding building crammed with Germans-from-Russia had already been treated to a softening-up sermon, invoking our unworthiness in the sight of God, noting how we were teetering on the edge of the pit, and if we paused could probably feel the heat and hear the agonized cries and smell the acrid smoke of brimstone down there. Or variants thereof.
Then followed what we’ve come to call “Old Prayer.” In unison, the congregation stood, turned around, and knelt on the floor (knee-cracking time, we called it.) Some old men who could not kneel wrapped their arms about the whorled ends of the pews, clutching them like shipwrecked sailors who have abandoned all hope of ever seeing home again. Elbows on the warm pews, hands clasped, foreheads on thumbs, eyes closed, everyone in church began to pray. Out loud. In German.
The sounds of Old Prayer mimicked those wild summer Dakota storms. A tense foreboding silence, then rustlings and whispers, like a gentle prairie breeze. Then mutterings in bass and alto, a mix of voices incoherent and indistinct, like wind carrying the distant hint of hail and thunder.
The voices grew louder, quivering, rising to soprano, many words unintelligible to my imperfect German, others clear and plaintive – Jesu, was meir getut hat – "Jesus, what have I done?" And louder and faster, rain pelting from all directions – Gott der Herr, ich weiss nit, wen sie willsh – God you are the Lord, I don't know, your will be done.
Then followed the pummeling of hailstones, voices cracking with wailings and keenings of indescribable loss, as if all those dark words laid end to end would carry them back to that other dark place that they missed, Das Scwartze Mehr, The Black Sea, from where my people had sojourned.
The storm rose in fury, a frenzied, ululating wail of quavering voices obliterating each other, a Tower of Babel, interspersed with heart-rending sobs, men crying, women crying, massive sighs and groans, like the timbers of a sea-battered ship which could stand no more.
I remember being amazed. How could anyone sin that much in one short week? (Later I realized that every week they charted all sins they had ever committed, old and new. None were ever forgotten, or forgiven, but slung like great weights across their shoulders to lug along all their lives.)
When I peered over the back of the pew, gazing out at all these poor sailors adrift in the sea of life, I was overwhelmed by the singsong, wavering, sobbing voices. And then a crescendo, a crash, a rumble of voices, and old prayer lost its forward motion, and began to slide down the backslope, lessening and lessening, a storm petering out. Crying subsided into whimpering; voices into whispers, followed by heartfelt and fervent amens echoing from every corner of the church.
By this time I was praying too – that a relative or well-meaning adult would not pray my name out loud and humiliate me, asking God to guide Wilhelm Foosler, the wayward servant, to keep him on the straight and narrow, to forge him into a sharp sacred sword of the Lord.
When it was over, I released my pent-up breath. The storm had ended. The church was mostly silent once more. With sighs and groans and mopping of rheumy eyes and creaking of joints, old prayer for an old people from an old country yearning for an old way of life forever lost, was over.
Bill Vossler’s four daily Facebook photos discuss gondola rides, or foggy trees. The Writer-in-Residence’s ebook is Polishing Your Prose: How to Write Better, and others.